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MONDAY:

Photographing the Dead: The History of Postmortem Photography from The Burns Collection and ArchivePostmortem photography, photographing a deceased person, was a common practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These photographs, from the beginning of the practice until now, are special mementos that hold deep meaning for mourners through visually “embalming” the dead. Although postmortem photographs make up the largest group of nineteenth-century American genre photographs, until recent years they were largely unseen and unknown. Dr. Burns recognized the importance of this phenomenon in his early collecting when he bought his first postmortem photographs in 1976. Since that time he has amassed the most comprehensive collection of postmortem photography in the world and has curated several exhibits and published three books on the subject: the Sleeping Beauty series. Tonight, Dr. Burns will speak about the practice of postmortem photography from the 19th century until today and share hundreds of images from his collection.

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FRIDAY:

TED BROOKLYN:
We’re living in what is commonly referred to as the “Information Age.” With the emergence of social networks, we build new communities by pressing the “Like” and “+1″ buttons and becoming fans. As we become increasingly interconnected with the Brooklyn community in these new ways, we find ourselves grasping for a new common ethos. In other words, we are striving to refine and define “better.” On December 2 at Brooklyn Bowl, we will address these issues with talks from the best and brightest minds of Brooklyn and beyond.

OPERA ON TAP/Roulette Sisters.
Opera is fun. Most people don’t seem to realize how much fun it really is. In order to prove it, Opera on Tap has taken its act to barrooms where they found out that beer on tap enhances the operatic experience. The company is made up of young singers and instrumentalists who relish the direct contact with audiences not inhibited in their reactions by the looming menace of giant chandelier.The Roulette Sisters have been turning heads and stopping traffic since forming in the cold winter of 2003. Noticing that their warm velvet harmonies and spicy hot licks were melting the snow outside, the sisters realized that they had started something not only weather-altering but soul-stirring as well. The sexy sisters play a hip-shaking blend of American country blues, traditional songs, popular tunes and old timey music from the first half of the 20th century. With Mamie Minch: resonator guitar, Meg Reichardt: electric guitar, Megan Burleyson: washboard, Karen Waltuch: viola.

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MONDAY:

From #occupy to revolutionJed Brandt, Mike Ely, Eric Riebellarsi
Jed Brandt is an editor with the Occupied Wall Street Journal, and together with Eric Ribellarsi, has recently returned from deep investigations into the “movement of the squares” in Greece and the revolutionary movement in Nepal. Mike Ely is a veteran revolutionary whose political life started with the early SDS and the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, and covers decades of experience attempting to build revolutionary organization, including among coal miners in the wildcat strike movements of the 1970s. All three are participants in the Kasama Project — a communist effort to re-imagine and regroup for revolution in the U.S. All have been active in the Occupy Together movement in different cities.

Robert Ashley:That Morning Thing
A remounting of Robert Ashley’s legendary opera. That Morning Thing was performed only three times (Ann Arbor, MI, Oakland, CA and Tokyo, Japan) in the late 1960s, but the opera acquired its reputation through rumor and the famous recordings of two sections, Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon and She Was A Visitor.

TUESDAY:

Citizen Cartography Workshop: Build a Virtual Atlas of New YorkHelp NYPL build the geospatial library of the future! This workshop (which takes place the three times a month) will get you oriented with the a set of tools the Library has developed (available at maps.nypl.org) that enables librarians and the general public to add valuable geographic context to old maps. The workshop will focus on the core activity of the website: georectification, or “warping” maps. This means overlaying digital images of historic maps onto a contemporary digital map (similar to Google Maps), transforming them into tiles of a virtual atlas.

THE STORY COLLIDER: BODIES IN MOTIONFrom finding awe in Hubble images to visiting the doctor, science is everywhere in our lives. Whether we wear a white lab coat or haven’t seen a test tube since 8th grade, science affects and changes us. We all have a story about science, and at The Story Collider, we want to hear those stories.

THURSDAY:

FRIDAY:

ONGOING:

Jack SmithFew artists can be said to have had a greater influence on the history of experimental cinema, queer cinema, and performance art than Jack Smith (1932–1989). Smith was an antic performer who played to the cheap seats, flamboyantly and tragicomically overwrought in the manner of Theda Bara, Maria Montez, Gloria Swanson, and Dorothy Lamour. His style of camp blended Hollywood orientalism, burlesque, kitsch, polymorphous sexuality, and social satire. Caustically funny, politically trenchant, and defiantly intolerant of intolerance, he provoked police raids and censorial judges, and created a beautiful, haunting, poignant, outrageous, orgiastic body of work that transformed the artistic landscape of the New York underground—a culture also being shaped in profoundly radical ways by Andy Warhol, Tony Conrad, Ken Jacobs, Ron Rice, the Kuchars, Jonas Mekas, the Velvet Underground, Charles Ludlam, and Susan Sontag—as well as inspiring a subsequent generation of artists, including Richard Foreman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Christophe Schlingensief, Laurie Anderson, Derek Jarman, Nan Goldin, Robert Wilson Jack Goldstein, Mike Kelley, Pipilotti Rist, Vaginal Davis, Cindy Sherman, Guy Maddin, Ryan Trecartin, John Waters, Vivienne Dick, The Cockettes, John Bock, and countless others.

PERFORMA 11Performa 11, the fourth edition of the internationally acclaimed biennial of new visual art performance presented by Performa, will be held in New York City from November 1–21, 2011. The three-week biennial will showcase new work by more than 100 of the most exciting artists working today, in an innovative program breaking down the boundaries between visual art, music, dance, poetry, fashion, architecture, graphic design, and the culinary arts. Presented in collaboration with a consortium of more than 50 arts institutions and over 50 curators, as well as a network of public spaces and private venues across the city, Performa 11 will ignite New York City with energy and ideas, acting as a vital “think tank” linking minds across the five boroughs and bringing audiences together for brilliant new performances in all disciplines.

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TUESDAY:

99% – The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative FilmFilmmakers Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites in attendance for discussion including a video conversation with other film collaborators. Film critic Christopher Campbell will be moderating the discussion. Williams Cole will introduce the event.This feature length documentary film is spearheaded by over 50 independent filmmakers, photographers, and videographers across the country. We have come together to pledge our time, skills and gear to cover the events taking place in NYC and around the country. The end product will be a compelling, cinematic, resonant, and honest portrait of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Founded by NYC filmmakers Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites, the project currently counts among its collaborative many award winning documentary producers, directors, musicians and editors (as well as PR people and distributors) including Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley (Battle for Brooklyn, Horns and Halos), Ava Duvernay (distributor of independent black films via AFFRM, dir/prod I Will Follow), Aaron Yanes as supervising editor (a frequent Barry Levinson editor, he’s also edited many award-winning features and documentaries, from Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Padre Nuestro to James Toback’s Cannes prize-winningTyson, Tyler Brodie (Another Earth, Terri), Bob Ray (Total Badass) and many more.